It takes a lot for a tenured professor to be fired, but it recently happened to Frances Widdowson. As reported by Fox News, Widdowson “who taught economics, justice and policy studies, was fired from Mount Royal University (MRU) in Calgary, Alberta, last December after stoking controversy for comments criticizing BLM, which she said ‘destroyed MRU’ to such an extent that she ‘doesn’t recognize the institution anymore.’”

In addition, “Widdowson, who studied Indigenization initiatives for 20 years, also took flak for claiming that Canada’s controversial residential school program offered Indigenous children the opportunity ‘to get an education that normally they wouldn’t have received.’ Her comments came amid a national backlash over the discovery of unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.”

And for that, she was fired, no doubt with the help of a Change.org petition titled, “Fire France Widdowson – a Racist Professor at MRU.”

To quote the petition itself, “Frances Widdowson is a racist professor who works at Mount Royal University. This is a call to demand that the university condemns Widdowson’s hateful actions against the BIPOC community and that she is terminated for her racist remarks.

“Mount Royal University has still yet to make a statement regarding Widdowson’s racist actions and continues to employ her.

“In ignoring the racist actions of people in power, we directly contribute to the systemic racism within our society.”

Now, you may or may not agree with Widdowson’s comments, and you may or may not agree that they were racist.

But she certainly had every right to express these views as a college professor, especially a tenured professor. To deny her that right is to deny free speech, plain and simple. As Elon Musk recently said,

“A good sign as to whether there is free speech is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like. And if that is the case, then we have free speech.”

But what makes the firing of Widdowson all the more egregious is that those on the left are allowed to engage in all kinds of outrageous hate speech without any penalty in the least or, certainly, without losing their job. (I have documented this radical shift to the left on American campuses in the chapter “The Campus Thought Police” in my new book The Silencing of the Lambs: The Ominous Rise of Cancel Culture and How We Can Overcome It.)

For example, in April 2020, in response to Kansas lawmakers who argued against a complete shutdown of religious services due to COVID, Philip Nel, an English professor at Kansas State University tweeted, “Local branch of death cult, aka @KansasGOP, votes to exempt churches from quarantine rules, endangering the lives of us all.”

That sounds pretty hateful to me. But was Nel censored for this tweet, let alone fired? Not a chance. (For the record, he’s the author of “Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature” and “Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature.”)

Last December, Professor Monica Casper, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University, tweeted this with reference to the Dobbs v. Jackson U.S. Supreme Court case, which could possibly overturn Roe v. Wade: “Two sexual predators, a white lady, and some racists walk into a courtroom…#SCOTUS #AbortionIsHealthcare.”

What a despicable characterization of an immensely important pro-life case.

Does she still have her job? Is she still dean? Take a guess.

But perhaps these comments were too mild, hardly worthy of dismissal or censure.

How about these comments? As reported by Prof. Jonathan Turley on February 2:

“An Australian professor of “moral psychology” used Twitter to call for the death of Trump supporters.  Neither Twitter nor his colleagues objected to Macquarie University Associate Professor Mark Alfano calling for ‘more of this please‘ after reading that a Trump supporter died in the recent Capitol Hill riot. He also called such deaths ‘comedy.’ He is not the first academic to call for such violence or defend killings. We previously discussed Rhode Island Professor Erik Loomis who writes for the site Lawyers, Guns, and Money and declared that he saw ‘nothing wrong’ with the killing of a conservative protester. (A view defended by other academics). Other professors have simply called for all ‘Republicans to suffer.’ What is striking is that such views are neither barred by Twitter nor, according to a conservative site that broke this story, denounced at his university.”

What a surprise!

Another professor openly wished for the death of Republican lawmakers who were shot at a baseball game in 2017, while in 2018, yet another professor posted this:

“OK, officially, I now hate white people. I am a white people, for God’s sake, but can we keep them — us — us out of my neighborhood? I just went to Harlem Shake on 124 and Lenox for a Classic burger to go, that would [be] my dinner, and the place is overrun with little Caucasian [expletives] who know their parents will approve of anything they do.”

He actually had a lot more to say, but this gives you an idea. Were either of these professors fired? Nope. Were they censored?

In the first example, citing Trinity College professor Johnny Eric Williams, he had also written that “all self-identified white people (no exceptions) are invested in and collude with systematic white racism/white supremacy.” And he tweeted that “whiteness is terrorism,” defending his comments rather than apologizing for them.

As a result of his “let them die” wish for the wounded GOP lawmakers, he was temporarily suspended, shortly after which he was granted tenure. I am not making this up.

In the case of the second professor quoted here, James Livingston, a tenured history professor at Rutgers, the university decided to sanction him but then reversed its position.

Yet Prof. Widdowson, a longtime tenured professor, was fired for comments that were far less offensive than any of these (and, the truth be told, probably quite accurate).

That’s the reality on our campuses today, and I barely scratched the surface of some of the extremism that exists.

The good news is that Widdowson is fighting back with vigor, wit, and determination (in the courts too), calling out the “woke” crowd.

May freedom and equality prevail.

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This article was originally published by AskDrBrown.org.

The shooting of GOP House Whip Steve Scalise and several other Republicans during an early morning baseball practice this month is as unsurprising as it was dreadful. Some of our deepest expectations were realized in that moment, as the furious rhetoric being churned out by the Left finally expressed itself in the ultimate form of contempt: an attempt to assassinate political leaders.

It wasn’t hard to predict where our national discourse was taking us. For years in the halls of Congress and in the courts, we’ve been engaged in a civil war. There’s been a marked increase in the use of the term “civil war” by those who spend their days opining on culture. It’s all been there but the shooting, and now we can check that box.

Until that happened, we all hoped that what was left of the original American spirit—the rule of law, respect for human dignity, a sense of honor, and love of country—would hold back the baser instincts of human nature. But we could all feel the rope fraying.

Even a cursory look at the last few years reveals a surprising amount of unfiltered and increasingly hostile rhetoric coming from politicians, entertainers, professors, scientists, philosophers, and other public figures.

It started with words

• Words from Barack Obama: “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” and “I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”

• Words from Donald Trump: “Anybody who hits me, we’re gonna hit them ten times harder” and “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

• Words from Hillary Clinton: “You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it.… Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America” and “Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

• Words from DNC Chairman Tom Perez: “[Trump] doesn’t give a s— about health care;” U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY): “Has [Trump] kept his promises? No. F— no;” U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA): “[Trump is a] disgusting, poor excuse of a man;” and former Clinton running mate Tim Kaine (D-VA): “What we’ve got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box.”

• Words from Fresno State University lecturer Lars Maischak: “Justice = the execution of two Republicans for each deported immigrant;” “To save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and the higher, the better”; and “#TheResistance Has anyone started soliciting money and design drafts for a monument honoring the Trump assassin, yet?”

• Words from Trinity College (CT) professor Johnny Eric Williams: “I’m fed the f— up with self-identified ‘white’s’ daily violence directed at immigrants, Muslims, and sexual and racially oppressed people. The time is now to confront these inhuman a–holes and end this now.”

• Words from Art Institute of Washington professor John Griffin: “[Republicans] should be lined up and shot. That’s not hyperbole; blood is on their hands.”

• Words from former Rutgers adjunct professor Kevin Allred: “Will the Second Amendment be as cool when I buy a gun and start shooting at random white people or no?”

• Words from former CNN personality Reza Aslan: “This piece of s— is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He’s an embarrassment to humankind.”

• Words from pop diva Madonna: “Yes, I’m angry. Yes, I’m outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House;” actress Lea DeLaria: “[O]r pick up a baseball bat and take out every f—ing republican and independent I see. #f—trump, #f—theGOP, #f—straightwhiteamerica, “f—yourprivilege;” comedienne Sarah Silverstein: “Once the military is w us fascists get overthrown;” and actor Johnny Depp: “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?”

While the words broke an unspoken decorum, they weren’t much without action. Mobs gathered and marched with signs that read, “Become ungovernable” and “This is war” and “The only good fascist is a dead one.” Violent protests shut down presentations deemed hate speech on college campuses: Dr. Charles Murray at Middlebury College, Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley.

From there it was only a few steps to acting out murder fantasies in the form of “art”: comedienne Kathy Griffin decapitating Donald Trump; rapper Snoop Dogg shooting Donald Trump in a “music” video; and a Shakespeare play featuring the murder of “Julius” Trump.

And finally, someone put these sentiments into action, unleashing a hailstorm of bullets on unsuspecting Republican congressmen practicing for a charitable baseball game.

As much as I regret making the distinction, the animus is almost wholly on the Left of the political spectrum. It is the Left that has become hostile to historical, traditional American values. It is the Left that has mocked Christianity and rejected our Judeo-Christian heritage. It is the Left that has labeled the rest of America homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic. It is the Left that accuses white people of having privilege that needs to be checked. It is the Left that has championed the principles of “tolerance,” “diversity,” and “inclusion” as the new American values. It is the Left that has embraced democratic socialism. It is the Left that has twisted American history and alters textbooks, traditions, and monuments.

John Adams once warned in a letter to the Massachusetts Militia:

Should the People of America, once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations, which assumes the Language of Justice and moderation while it is practicing Iniquity and Extravagance; and displays in the most captivating manner the charming Pictures of Candour frankness & sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and Insolence: this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the World. Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

In other words, our society was organized on the assumption that our “moral and religious people” would govern themselves under the auspices of godly conduct and that if they didn’t, our country would become a hellhole. Does anyone doubt the truth of his statement?

He wasn’t the first to recognize that laws can’t keep people from wickedness. “When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild,” wrote the wise man, “but whoever obeys the law is joyful” (Proverbs 29:18).

James T. Hodgkinson didn’t pull the trigger in a vacuum. He did what many of our fellow citizens seem to be calling for. Now that the barrier has been broken, is it only a matter of time before others unbridled by morality and religion step through the breach?”

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